


Singularities of Survival

by nerdzeword



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 09:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6950881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdzeword/pseuds/nerdzeword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione may or may not be dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singularities of Survival

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for a class and just changed the names a bit. No one even suspected. Mwahahaha 
> 
> Anywho. Because it was for class, I have some art to go with this story on my tumblr if you guys want to check them out. nerdzewordart.tumblr.com/tagged/singularities of survival
> 
> Questions and comments are always appreciated.

 

Hermione looked out the window of the little cafe she was in. It was a quaint little shop, situated on the corner of what should have been a busy street. She supposed to some people it was, but Hermione had practically grown up here,and knew what Diagon Alley usually looked like. 

She watched the the passerbys trot past, minding their own business. The jackets and cloaks they wore shuddered and spun in the gale force winds that plagued the cobblestone street. The sparse rain tapped at the window at an irregular rate that matched Hermione’s own heart. Tap. Tap Tap. Tap Tap. She wondered why none of the people on the street had umbrellas. Did they like getting wet? The hood lifted off the head of one of the passerbys, revealing the skull that lay beneath. 

“Oh that’s right, they’re dead. We’re all dead,” she muttered aloud. That was, after all, what happened when people went to war. 

She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, only to have it pop back out again as watched a family go past, the little girl jumping into puddles with a gleeful laugh that reached all the way into the coffee shop. Well, some people could still be alive she supposed. Hermione wasn’t really sure. She didn’t talk to anyone in this post war world. She  _ could _ still talk, technically, so it reasoned that the other dead might be capable of speech as well.

A happy couple walked past. Well, she assumed they were happy; they didn’t have faces either. Hermione wondered how it was that she still had one. She found a bit of irony in that. She looked alive, but felt more than a bit dead. The others looked dead, but continued about their lives (deaths?) almost as if they were not. Hermione rather envied them. Perhaps they didn’t remember their deaths. Not like her. She remembered every single horrific detail.

 

She wasn’t sure how long it had been. Time wasn’t really relevant in this dead world. Or was there more than one world? Actually, she was sure there was more than one world. After all, she had yet to see any of her friends here, and she had  _ watched _ them die. Hermione had watched as the light faded from their eyes, and their bodies had gone cold. Their deaths had felt so different from her own.

Hermione could only remember bits and pieces of her life. It seemed a cruel fate, that the parts she did remember were the most horrible memories she had. (If they weren’t, than she was glad for the amnesia.)

When Harry had died there was screaming. Not from him, but from everyone else. His girlfriend, his friends, and family. Hermione remembered that one of those voices had been hers. He had crumpled to the ground, bleeding from so many different cuts that she wasn’t sure where the last hit met its mark. Unlike the world she found herself in now, she remembered her past in color. Harry had always been red to her, red like the stupid scarf he wore all the time, red like the house they had grown up in. He was her warm fire on a cool day and his eyes had held a passion that had rivalled her own. The red only reminded her of his blood after that, and It was all she could do to keep going. 

Anyone could argue that she hadn’t in fact kept going at all. But Hermione liked to think that she had handled the death of her childhood best friend better than most people would have. It was the deaths of everyone else that had killed her.

When Ron died, it was a quieter affair. They had known it was coming and Hermione had come to terms with the fact that her friend’s sunshine yellow was fading to a pale grey. After all, no one could survive the amount of damage his body had sustained. Hermione had stood by his hospital bed that day and held his hand as his last breath left his body, surrounded by all the people who had loved him. She had come to the realization that there weren’t many people who would be around her bed, were their situations reversed. Yes, she was a war hero, but her bookworm tendencies as a child hadn’t lent her any favors in the friend department. In fact, Ron had been the last one. 

She hadn’t seen any of his friends and family since the funeral and didn’t reckon she ever would again. Of course, she didn’t leave her flat for nearly a month after his death, so that wasn’t surprising. She didn’t think she would even recognize them now anyway.

She wasn’t there when her parents died. Hermione returned home after the war with no more friends, an empty backpack, and a head full of memories she didn’t want. She had thought that she could just go home, pretend that the war had never happened, that she never had two best friends and a lifetime’s supply of guilt. The last of her resilience had shattered when she’d walked across the shockingly green grass, into her parent’s large townhouse. Only to discover upon opening the door, that they had died in a car crash while she’d been gone. 

Some of the neighbors had been nice enough to come over and place sheets over all of the furniture to protect it from dust until she could return to deal with it all. Hermione didn’t even bother removing the sheets, just packed up what was remaining of her belongings, and left. She didn’t ever want to see her mother’s prized doilies or her father’s old reading chair again. Those memories were too painful. Vaguely, Hermione wondered what had become of her old home, was it still lying empty? Waiting for owners who would never return? After all, she had died soon after.

 

“Hermione?” She was jolted out of her reverie when someone put a hand on her shoulder. She blinked in surprise. She wasn’t even aware she could still feel anything anymore. She turned to look at the person who had touched her.

“Draco?” She would recognize that face anywhere. It was the face of- well he had never been her friend, but he wasn’t the worst either. He was much prettier here in the afterlife than she remembered him being in the world of the living. Or maybe it was her perspective that had changed. She liked to think that she saw people’s appearances rather objectively. However, Draco had always been the exception. And besides, Hermione distinctly remembered that when she had first met Draco, he had been an unfortunate mess of child limbs and baby fat, mixed with prepubescent awkward growth spurts. She recalled that he had been like that for the first few years- or maybe she had just thought he had. Time was weird here. 

Hermione thought it was hardly fair that he got to be tall, blonde and gorgeous in the afterlife while she still looked nearly the same as she had in high school. Same frizzy hair, same freckles. She supposed she probably looked a bit more dead. 

 

Hermione didn't know why or how, but Draco was always there when something significant happened in her life. She wasn’t sure why she thought the afterlife would be any different.

He was there when Harry died, standing there on the edge of the frey. Hermione recalled that it had been him to restrain her and keep her from running into the crossfire to reach her fallen friend. She had struggled against him, her screams piercing through the night sky. She had scratched and clawed at him in her effort to escape. Hermione remembered that she didn’t feel bad about it at the time. It was just Draco. He may have been her comrade at arms, but he was still a massive dick. 

Hermione wasn’t sure if she still shared that opinion with her past self.

He was present when she got the news about Ron too. She wasn’t sure how, or why he was even in the same room; since they usually tried to avoid each other. Now that she thought back, she wasn’t even sure what room she’d been in. She just knew that the two of them had established a sort of truce that day. They just couldn’t afford to hate each other the way they did in school anymore. With all of the tension in the air, even the most lighthearted jab could blow up in their faces. 

What she did remember about that day was the feeling she got with that phone call: dread. And she remembered their conversation. It should have been an insignificant conversation, in the grand scheme of things. But it wasn’t. Not to her anyway.

She remembered putting the phone back on the receiver, and turning to look at Draco. Even then, she hadn’t been sure what to do with her old enemy, he had changed- of course he had- they all had. She had watched him with baited breath, waiting to see what he had to say. He knew what was going on..

Draco could have been mean. He could have said a lot of different things to hurt her and cause the tears that lingered behind her lashes to fall. After all, he’d never felt the need to pull his punches before. He could have said a lot of things.

But war changes people.

What he did say was elegant in it’s simplicity, and oozing with sincerity. 

“I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sure if he was talking about Ron or about their own personal past, but the  sentiment was genuine either way. Hermione never thought she could feel anything for her school rival other than contempt, but she found herself standing there with a new feeling blooming in her chest: respect. 

When her parents died, he had been there too. Well, not there exactly; but he’d been there for the aftermath. For the part where she got smashed out of her mind and he ended up helping her home with a look of acquiescence on his face. She remembered stuttering out a thank you as she pressed the door shut in his face. Hermione had felt a bit guilty about that. But she hadn’t seen him since to apologize. You couldn’t apologize if you were dead.

 

Which brought her back to the present, and the subsequent realization that Draco Malfoy was decidedly neutral in her eyes. No matter how rotten he had been to her in school. It was only after another moment that she realized that she had recognized him. She could see his face. He still  _ had  _ a face. That was odd.

“Why hello there, Draco. Come to join the rest of us dead?” her voice cracked from lack of use. He studied her face for a moment before answering her. 

“Hermione. You’re not dead.” She downed the last of her coffee. 

“Well, it sure as hell feels like it then.” She stood up and walked out of the cafe, leaving Draco and his strange, intact face behind.

 

He followed her, of course. 

“Hermione. You’re not dead. You and me? We’re survivors.” 

“How do you know?”

He looked taken aback.

“What?”

Hermione stopped in the middle of the street, ignoring the rain on her skin and the curious looks sent her way by the skulls, and turned to face him. 

“How. Do. You. Know. How do you know that you’re not dead?” She enunciated each word with a poke to his chest.

He opened his mouth but he couldn’t seem to find a retort. Hermione turned on her heel and continued on her way. So what if Draco was the most interesting thing to happen to her since this stupid monochromatic world. It didn’t mean she liked him any more than she had in school.

There was a scream, and Hermione instinctively turned around to see one of the skull men pointing something at one of the other dead people. She tried to blink away the rain, to see what it was. The object faded in and out of focus as if she were in a dream. 

“Hey!” She yelled at the skull man. Hermione regretted the action as soon as she had said it, as the skull man turned to point the thing at her. She felt faint. None of this seemed real.

Maybe she was dreaming. Hermione blinked away more rain, and the world seemed to move in slow motion around her, as her brain began to register her surroundings. It felt like the entire world seemed to turn to molasses- even the rain seemed to fall slower. Hermione thought she could hear Draco yell, but he was either too far away to hear properly over the rain, or her brain couldn’t recognize the words in slow motion. She supposed it didn’t matter much  _ why _ his words made no sense, just the fact that they didn’t. She saw sparks and what looked like someone tackle the skull man. 

Hermione swayed back and forth slightly, everything was so confusing and she was just so tired. It occurred to her that her arm was tingling. That wasn't a new feeling for her. Wounds were another side effect of war. She looked down at her arm and her suspicions were confirmed. She watched the blood run down her arm, helped along by a river of rain. The more the blood mixed with the rain, the lighter it got. Until it was gone completely. Hermione thought that was an accurate representation of her life. (Death?) When she looked back up, Draco was staring at her.

 

The last time she'd seen him look at her with so much raw emotion, she had been eleven and he was sneering racist slurs at her from across the courtyard at Hogwarts, while she tried to convince her friends that punching him wasn't worth the trouble of detention. 

She remembered that she would ignore her own advice three years later, after seeing him laughing at the thought of poor Buckbeak’s demise. For her, it had been a matter of honor. Hermione could take anything the stupid bully could send her way without a blink of an eye. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard it all before. When someone dared to insult one of her friends however, she considered it an act of war. 

She would give anything to go back to her schoolyard battles when all she had to deal with was the fact that it had taken two weeks for her bruised hand to heal completely, and two more before Draco had stopped flinching when she walked past. Hermione hadn't seen his sneer or his smirk in a long time.

“What were you thinking!?” He yelled “Why didn’t you do something? You should have known something wasn’t right! He was a deatheater for fuck’s sake!” Hermione blinked up at him, wondering when he had lost his smirk, and why he even cared about what happened to her now. Maybe he was trying to make amends? She thought the afterlife probably wasn't the best place to start making up for your mistakes, but who was she to judge. At least he was trying. Hermione thought he deserved a little bit of leeway for the effort, especially as it looked like he had just saved her life. She opened her mouth to thank him but all that came out was the explanation she didn't even know she was willing to give.

“He looked the same as everyone else to me.”

  
  



End file.
